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Friday, February 15, 2013

Happy Friday everyone!! I'm always excited for the weekend so let's kick it off with a few hauls, shall we?!First up today is my haul from Victoria's Designer Creations! From the beginning of my becoming aware of this vendor, I had heard mixed reviews. However, I decided to give VDC a try because her wax was absolutely gorgeous. Vickie is truly an artist with the way that she designs her wax. I have even done the unthinkable - considered buying a whole loaf of wax - when I saw her gorgeous loaves posted on her Facebook page.My experience with this vendor was mixed as well. First of all, her site is pretty confusing. There are no scent descriptions listed anywhere so you have to make your purchases based on scent name alone. Not a big deal for some, but I like to know what oils are in the wax that I'm purchasing. But I went ahead anyways and bought some small items in scents that sounded good, and I ended up being quite pleased with the majority of the scents. So that's definitely a plus. Her stuff is gorgeous AND it smells good.And now comes the TAT discussion. Her TAT is not listed on the site. I've seen others ask her about it on the Facebook page, and she never gives a straight answer. I supposed I'd rather have a vendor not give me a set TAT time if they know they will not be able to meet that promise but it would be nice to know an approximate amount of time. After 2 months of no shipping notice, I contacted Vickie and she let me know that my order was complete and she would be sending it out in the next day. A week later it was finally sent out and I received my order. I know her family had a nasty virus during that time so that is why there was a delay and I didn't mind. So, the TAT for this order was over 9 weeks. The long TAT wouldn't bother me so much if I didn't know that people who had placed their orders well after I did were receiving their orders before mine. Vickie is in the process of switching over to RTS so apparently people were getting their orders much quicker than I did because they had ordered items that she had already in stock. Not too thrilled about that but again, I can't complain too much because I have my order here with me. There is another issue that I would like to address with this vendor, which is the matter of cigarette smoke. Several people have noted that their products from this vendor have arrived smelling like cigarette smoke. However, lots of people have said that their products from her did not smell like cigarette smoke. The box that I received from her did, in fact, smell like cigarette smoke as did the packaging materials she used. However, the vast majority of the wax products smelled fine. There was only one product that had the problem of smelling like smoke, and it was a freebie, so I wasn't too concerned with it. Had I received an item from her that I paid for that smelled like cigarette smoke, it probably would have bothered me much more. Everything I paid for smelled absolutely amazing, so I'm not too phased by it. But for those who are sensitive to cigarette smoke, I would recommend that you skip this vendor.In the end, Vickie was very kind and apologetic throughout my correspondence with her and her products are beautiful and smell great, so I am willing to give this company another shot. However, I will be waiting until she has switched over completely to RTS. As she does not have scent descriptions, these will be on my nose's observations alone. Here's what I received:

Raspberry Filled Donuts - This is SO YUMMY! I figured this would be like a typical jelly donut scent, but it's very different. This is a spicy donut scent with added raspberry. I don't think I've ever smelled a spicy bakery scent with raspberry in it as well. It's amazing!

Cinnamon & Sugar Donuts - This one is very light on the cinnamon scent and heavier on the sweet sugar note. I usually expect cinnamon donut scents to be cinnamon-heavy so this was a nice surprise. Really like this one!

Pink Sugared Delights - This one is baffling me. I definitely smell Pink Sugar and a bakery note, but there is also a sweet, fruity note to it as well. It smells really good, very unique from any other PS blend I've smelled before.

Coconut Colada Cake - I can smell the coconut and the cake notes in here, but there's also a really sweet note in here that's almost bubblegum like. I'm not sure I'm loving this one but it is nice.

Divine Sunshine Cake - This one is awesome. I smell a very strong note of pineapple, plus brown sugar and caramel perhaps? Never smelled anything quite like this one either, really unique and delicious!

Paradise Pound Cake - This is another amazing scent. I smell coconut, pineapple, a hint of citrus and a cake note. This is one of my favorites of the order, can't wait to melt this one! If it performs well while melting, I can see myself reordering this one for sure.

Praline Pound Cake - Not really a fan of this one. I have found myself becoming very picky when it comes to praline scents, I only like the ones that are super caramel-ly. This one is not, it smells like weird stale nuts. Blah.

Pink Sugared 7 Up Cake - This is a nice blend of Pink Sugar ad 7 Up Pound Cake. It seems to me like this one has some extra lime added to it. It's a very fresh scent! I'm not getting much cake out of it at the moment.

Pink Orange Chiffon Cake - Love this one! I get mostly the orange chiffon cake but with a slight background of the Pink Sugar. Just when I think I'm over Pink Sugar, a blend like this pops up and I fall in love with it all over again!

Lemon Chiffon - This is just a standard lemon bakery scent. It's a sweet lemon, not a strong cleaner lemon. Very yummy, though not unique.

Lemon Blueberry Coconut Chiffon - This is still pretty heavy on the lemon chiffon scent but with a nice hint of blueberry. I don't get any coconut out of this one, unfortunately. Still love it though!

Cherry Chip Cake - I've had this scent from a few other vendors and it's always a favorite of mine so I decided to pick up a little cake bite of it from VDC. This one smells as good as the others, a nice, sweet cherry scent mixed with cake. No medicinal notes here. LOVE!

VDC's Iced Spice Cake - This is definitely my favorite scent of the entire order. It is incredible. You all know that I am a huge fan of spicy bakery scents, and this one is among the best I've ever smelled. It smells exactly like the cinnamon raisin bread that I make. Obsessed! This is definitely a loaf candidate!

VDC's Coconut Cake - This is a yummy, sweet coconut cake scent. Simple yet awesome. I can see this becoming a favorite if it throws well.

Orange Creamsicle - This is a great creamsicle scent. It's very heavy on the orange but there is a bit of creaminess to it. Really like this one!

Cotton Candy Milkshake - This is a close second for favorite item in the order, following closely behind the amazing VDC Spice Cake. This is phenomenal! It's a strong, creamy cotton candy scent. It's a bit different from all the Cotton Candy Frosting scents out there in that it is a bit creamier. In LOVE with this.

Blueberry Cheesecake Ice Cream - This is very heavy on the blueberry scent with an added creaminess from the ice cream and cheesecake notes. Not my favorite blueberry scent ever but it is very yummy!

And now for the freebies:

Unnamed mini pie (freebie) - This is the one that smelled like straight up cigarette smoke. It didn't have a scent label on it and I could not, for the life of me, figure out what scent this was. All I could smell was the smoke. It was wrapped in cello, but I took it out to air it out for a few days and see if the smoke scent would dissipate. It did not. A shame because it's so pretty!

Peach Sugared ZB (freebie)- I am not a fan of Zucchini bread scents, but I do love peach scents so I was excited to see a peach scent in the bunch. The peach note is very nice, but unfortunately it is dominated by the ZB note so this will be finding a new home.

Bursting with Blueberries ZB (freebie) - Again, not a huge fan of ZB but this one is pretty heavy on the blueberry so I am going to try melting this one. It smells great, and I haven't even taken the cello off yet. Very strong. And how adorable is it with the blueberries all over?!

Since you can't see the true beauty of these through the cello, here's a few of the things I ordered outside of their wrappers to see the detail on them.

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In the end, there were some problems with the whole experience but overall, everything smells great and I am willing to overlook the problems I had and give this vendor a chance. I've melted one thing from her so far and it smelled incredible so in the end, great smelling wax wins out every time!

11 comments:

I'm glad the majority of the items lost the smoke scent with new packaging! You got some awesome scents. The cotton candy ice cream scoop is so adorable! Maybe you could pop the ZB blends into that RR you just joined, someone must love ZB haha

I actually didn't have to end up repackaging them, the scent dissipated pretty quickly from the cello! The tarts were unaffected. The only one that had the smoke smell still was that darn mini pie! I think I'm going to save them for the VDC RR so I can put some VDC in after taking some out =)

I looove looking at pics of Vickie's work. I really want to eat the Cinnamon Sugar Donut lol. yum. I've also had TAT issues with her in the past and I'm hoping it's not like that for my next order. BTW you guys both are on the 3rd RR box list ^ :) The list will go up in a couple weeks.